It is Monday afternoon in San Francisco and a Chinese engineer at the front of the room is pitching to several dozen tech investors on his latest invention: a flying robot.
The Hex “Air Robot” is a six-rota drone with its own autopilot system, a 2km range and a self-balancing camera mount. When wirelessly tethered to a smartphone or tablet, it can be put in “follow me around” mode – “like a cute flying puppy”, its creator says. The Hex team sees a “big opportunity” when the US Federal Aviation Authority opens the skies to autonomous unmanned vehicles in 2015.
Hex is one of 10 gadget start-ups to have completed a Haxlr8r hardware accelerator programme in Shenzhen, China. Others included Spark, a cloud platform for internet-enabled devices, and Helios, a set of GPS and LED-equipped bike handlebars that are controlled from a smartphone to change the colour or strength of the lights and indicate which way to turn.